On December 14, 2023, Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty across all Azure regions. Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty helps governments meet their compliance, security, and policy requirements while utilizing the cloud to provide superior value to their citizens.
Governments around the world must meet a wide range of national and regional compliance requirements for applications and workloads, including governance, security controls, privacy, and in some cases data residency and sovereign protections. Until now, most solutions for addressing these regulatory requirements have relied upon private cloud and on-premises environments, creating a lag in adoption of scalable, secure and resilient cloud capabilities.
Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty – offering governance, security, transparency and sovereign technology – supports the digital transformation of government customers unlike any other cloud provider in the world. Customers gain automation of best practices to address regulatory requirements while benefiting from the rapid pace of innovation in the hyperscale cloud.
In terms of achieving data sovereignty in the cloud, Microsoft took the following actions:
- Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty is built on the foundation of more than 60 cloud regions, providing industry-leading cybersecurity along with the broadest compliance coverage.
- Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty provides sovereign controls to protect and encrypt sensitive data and control access to that data, enabled by sovereign landing zones and Azure Confidential Computing.
- Customers can adopt specific, sovereignty-focused Azure policy initiatives to address the complexity of compliance with national and regional regulatory requirements.
More information
For the official announcement, please visit: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/12/14/microsoft-cloud-for-sovereignty-now-generally-available-opening-new-pathways-for-government-innovation/.
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